1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print time management program, print management apparatus, print time management apparatus and print time management method, and more particularly to a print time management program, print management apparatus, print time management apparatus and print time management method that are capable of carrying out accurate printing completion time management.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printing system comprising an image forming apparatus connected to a network and is shared by multiple users, such as a printer or MFP (Multi-Function Peripheral), and personal computers (PCs) each having a printer driver by which to output print data to the image forming apparatus, is known in the conventional art.
For example, a technology for calculating print processing time from the processing capacity of the user PC and determining appropriate printing parameters based on the results of such calculation has been proposed (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2002-278724).
A system that estimates the printing completion time from the printer's processing capacity and rearranges the order of printing based on the requested printing completion time entered by the user has also been proposed (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2002-259110).
A technology has also been proposed for estimating the print time in an ink jet printer connected to a peer-to-peer network (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2001-27941).
However, the technologies pertaining to the conventional art referred to above entail the problem that the user cannot learn the accurate processing completion time for the print data sent by the user.
For example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2002-278724, because the print processing time is calculated based on the user PC's processing capacity, the processing time needed by an output device such as a printer, which should comprise an important element of such calculation, is not taken into account, and therefore the printing completion time cannot be estimated accurately.
In the technologies disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Applications 2002-259110 and 2001-27941, because the jobs requested by other users and reside in the print queue of the output device such as a printer are not taken into account, the printing completion time cannot be estimated with accuracy. In other words, using the methods disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Applications 2002-259110 and 2001-27941, the processing time can be estimated from the device processing time and amount of data transmission, but if a large number of jobs are stored in the device by other users, a substantial delay in the printing completion time can result.